The Glenn Miller Orchestra - Great Songs Of The 60's (1965)

This album is somewhat less successful than its predecessor, Glenn Miller Time -- 1965; that album featured Bobby Hackett on the trumpet solos and straddled the 1940s and the 1960s, dividing its repertory evenly between both decades with arrangements by George Williams that did the same, recalling the authentic Miller sound but retooling it slightly to take advantage of stereo and high-fidelity recording. And it was an instrumental album. Great Songs of the 60's, however, makes extensive use of the vocal group the Moonlight Serenaders, who push the recordings firmly in the direction of a sweet band sound at the expense of much of this orchestra's ability to swing. Moreover, the presence of numbers such as "Downtown" -- a song that Sinatra also stumbled over in the course of trying to record at around the same time -- and second-rate pop material such as "Everybody Loves Somebody" doesn't help matters any. "Wives and Lovers" shows what this band could do, in terms of making convincing '60s-based swing music, and the detour into Dixieland for "Washington Square" isn't bad, even if it isn't what one was really buying a record like this to hear, so there are bright spots, but they stand out a little less prominently here than those of the orchestra's earlier album. One also wishes that there were credits on this album, so listeners would know who plays the beautifully understated guitar on "Love Me with All Your Heart." Great Songs of the 60's was reissued in 2001 on CD paired with Glenn Miller Time -- 1965. ~by Bruce Eder